A sister woken by mistake sees St. Faustina smile and die at Łagiewniki

KRAKÓW, October 5, 1938 AD — Saint Faustina Kowalska died tonight at about eleven o’clock in the infirmary of her convent at Łagiewniki, on the southern edge of Kraków, a few hours after she had received the last sacraments. She was thirty-three, and the tuberculosis that killed her had attacked her gut as well as her lungs. By then most of the sisters had been to the evening service and gone to bed. Two sisters were with her when she died.

Her sisters in the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy already held her to be a saint. She was born Helena Kowalska, the third of ten children, and had to leave school after three years, when her place was needed for younger children. In thirteen years in the order she worked as a cook, a gardener and a porter at the gate.

Most of the sisters did not know what Jesus had asked of her. In February 1931 AD, in her cell at Płock, Jesus appeared to St. Faustina in a white robe, with two rays coming from His breast. Jesus asked St. Faustina to have an image of Him painted as He had appeared to her, with the words “Jesus, I trust in You” beneath it. He also asked for a Feast of Divine Mercy on the first Sunday after Easter. Only her two confessors and a few of her superiors knew of it. When the Church later added her feast on this day to the calendar used by the whole Church, it described her as one who “saw in the Lord Jesus Christ the merciful face of the Father and became its herald.”

St. Faustina’s tuberculosis was not found until she was living in Vilnius. From December 1936 AD her superiors sent her for treatment to the municipal sanatorium at Prądnik, in Kraków, and over the next two years she spent more than eight months there. A sister who visited her there twice a week was surprised that St. Faustina’s doctor, Dr. Adam Zylber, let her go to Mass at all. Dr. Zylber told the sister that the illness could not be cured, but that St. Faustina was an extraordinary nun. Patients as ill as she was never got out of bed, he said, yet he had seen her walking to the chapel holding on to the wall.

St. Faustina went back to Prądnik after Easter this year, and at the end of June she stopped writing in her notebook. In August she wrote to the head of the order that she felt this was their last conversation on earth. “I do not fear death, my soul abound in great peace,” St. Faustina wrote. She asked her family not to come to see her, because of the cost of the journey.

On September 17 she was brought back from the hospital to the convent infirmary to wait for death. Following the custom of the order, she asked the sisters to forgive her for any wrong she had done them without meaning to. When sisters came to see her, St. Faustina kept them back from the bed so that they would not catch the disease. She told one of them: “Dear Sister, take care of yourself more.”

When another sister asked whether she suffered much, St. Faustina answered: “Yes, I suffer a lot, but I am fine with it.” She was burning with fever and very thirsty. Still, she would not drink the water the sisters brought her, and only wet her tongue with it.

Blessed Michał Sopoćko, her confessor from Vilnius, visited her for the last time on September 26. St. Faustina said almost nothing to him, except that she was in communion with the Heavenly Father.

The superior of the house, Mother Irena Krzyżanowska, came often to the infirmary. St. Faustina told her: “There will be a Feast of Divine Mercy, I see it, all I want is to do God’s will.” In her last days St. Faustina sat up in bed, asked Mother Irena to come closer, and whispered: “Jesus wants to elevate me and make me a saint.” Mother Irena saw that she said it with deep seriousness and without any pride.

Yesterday St. Faustina smiled and asked the nursing sister to sing for her. The sister sang “Welcome the Fountain”, and St. Faustina was delighted.

This afternoon Father Józef Andrasz, the Jesuit who had been her confessor in Kraków, came to the convent. At four o’clock St. Faustina made her last confession to Father Andrasz. He gave her absolution and the Sacrament of the Sick.

At supper a bell rang, and the sisters left the table and went upstairs to St. Faustina’s room. The chaplain of the house, Father Teodor Czaputa, and Mother Irena were at the bed, and the other sisters stood in the corridor. Together they said the prayers for the dying. When the prayers were over, St. Faustina told Mother Irena that she would not die yet. The sisters went down to the evening service, and one sister stayed at the bed to keep watch.

Sister Eufemia Traczyńska wanted to be there when St. Faustina died. She was a junior sister, still in her first years of vows. Sister Eufemia had heard from Sister Amelia Socha that St. Faustina was bound to become a saint, and she wanted to see how a saint dies. As a junior sister she had no permission to sit up with a sister who had tuberculosis, so she prayed to the souls in Purgatory to wake her when the time came.

Sister Eufemia went to bed at the usual hour and fell asleep at once. Then someone woke her: “Sister, if you want to be at the moment of Sister Faustina’s death, get up.” Sister Eufemia realised that it was a mistake: the sister keeping watch had meant to wake Sister Amelia and had come to the wrong cell. Sister Eufemia woke Sister Amelia, put on her work dress and headdress, and ran to the infirmary. Sister Amelia followed her. It was about eleven at night.

Sister Eufemia later wrote down what they saw as they came in: “Sister Faustina, as if, opened the eyes a bit, smiled slightly and then she bowed her head and already…” Sister Amelia said that St. Faustina had probably just died. “I looked at Sister Amelia but I didn’t say anything, we continued to pray,” Sister Eufemia wrote. The blessed candle burned the whole time.

A moment later Mother Irena came in. “We prayed with Mother Superior a lot,” Sister Eufemia wrote.